New Harley-Davidson tech

22nd August 2019

Cornering traction control | Connect services

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▲ The 2020 Harley-Davidson Road Glide. Prices start at £22,995

Harley-Davidson has announced two new packages for selected models designed to keep riders in-tune with the latest electronic techy must-haves whilst helping them stay vertical.

Connect Service

The first is the H-D™ Connect Service. This is a suite of toys designed to keep you in touch with your bike. It also allows Harley-Davidson dealers to keep you informed of service intervals and factory recalls.

Basically, riders can now use their smartphones to pinpoint the location of their bike and study its current status (health check, fuel level, mileage covered, battery charge level, infotainment stuff, and suchlike).

Additionally, the system will provide security alerts telling you if the bike is being tampered with or knocked about in a car park or whatever. And if the motorcycle is taken beyond a its designated geo-fencing area, the satellites orbiting the planet will start tracking it and give you a heads up.

Clever stuff, but old hat to many other manufacturers. Still, Harley-Davidson is now at the party and these features are either a welcome technological intrusion or further dilution of the basic Easy-Rider-throw-your-watch-away motorcycle riding experience.

The H-D Connect service is fitted standard to 2020 Touring, Tri Glide® Ultra, and CVO™ models, but does not include Road King®/S and Electra Glide® Standard models). It's also available on the new LiveWire™ electric motorcycle, but only in some regions. So check with your dealer, etc.

Reflex™ Defensive Rider System (RDRS)

The other new feature is the Reflex™ Defensive Rider System, or RDRS. This box of microchips and state-of-the-art whizz-bangs is designed to help stop you falling off your bike. That's the bottom line.

The features include:

C-ABS (Cornering Enhanced Anti-lock-Braking)

C-ETC (Cornering Enhanced Traction Control)

C-LEB (Cornering Enhanced Linked Braking).

There's also:

Drag-Torque Slip Control System (DSCS)

Cornering Enhanced Drag-Torque Slip Control System (C-DSCS).

Vehicle Hold Control (VHC) to stop your bike rolling backward or forward down a hill

Tyre Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS)

We know it's all useful stuff, but ... well, let's leave it alone. We're just getting old.

The new features will be available on all 2020 Harley-Davidson CVO, Tri-Glide Ultra and Freewheeler® models, plus the 2020 Harley-Davidson LiveWire model. RDRS features as standard on all Touring models excluding Electra Glide ® Standard.

If any of this impresses you, have a word with your H-D dealer who will show you all the bells and whistles and explain why you need 'em.

Here at Sump we don't ride our bicycles too often, but lately we've been looking at 'em more often and reflecting on the simpler life we once led.

How about you?

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